First Christmas Commercial

[barondave]

One of my measures of the economy is how early Christmas needs to be. The earlier, the worse things are. Retail people get desperate.

Tonight, during Boston Legal (still one of the best shows on). A woman approached her husband about going to KMart to do Christmas shopping. Hubby, raking leaves: "Christmas? Didn't we just finished carving pumpkins?" [Columbus Day pumpkins, apparently.] "They have Lay-A-Way." "Genius."

I've seen other commercials with X-Mas music and suggestions of gift ideas, but this was the first really blatant example.

Oy vey.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

You've reminded me that there was a lot of Christmas junk at Kinko's when I was there last week.

K.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Poor Thanksgiving. In the last few Bush years, we've seen stores go from the orange of Halloween to the red-and-white of Christmas without much in the way of Turkey Day promotion. Holidays only count if people buy things for it. Cue Green Chri$tma$ by Stan Freberg.

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

Do you realize that this was the first time I've even heard lay-a-way mentioned by any store in years?

It is a service that USED to be offered regularly by retail stores. For five bucks, you could pay off these items bit by bit, especially if you didn't have money right away. The store would hold the items until you paid them off. (The K-mart deal is a payment every two weeks for eight weeks.)

Stores generally dumped this service, which required a clerk, in favor of credit cards that would make the stores lots of interest fees. But now, people don't have much credit left. How interesting that this old-timey, friendly store service is being publicly re-introduced, at a time when the stores realize their customers are going broke.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Last I checked (which was several years ago), it was as you say: an offering by retail stores. To my knowledge, you can still do this with many of the local stores. I've been wracking my brain trying to remember if KMart always had lawayway and are simply advertising it. I think so. You're right about the credit cards: layaway went the way of bank Christmas Clubs: a "frequent flyer" service that became expensive to manage but customers expected. Around here, most of the retail outlets have been around for a long time, and customers have a long memory. Even for newer residents (and I live in an area with a rapidly changing population), traditions die hard.

Besides, this year might be more about cash flow than ROI.

[hunnythistle.livejournal.com]

We've had xmas stuff since the first week of Sept at the craft store where I've been working. The Halloween stuff arrived July 1st. We also have a few turkey things, but Halloween really dominates the scene.

To be fair, it makes sense that the raw materials for people to make ornaments and decor arrives early -- October is almost too late for some folks to be starting this process. But it was all the pre-made decor that arrived first; raw materials came in almost a month after.

The Halloween stuff has been on sale for the last three weeks -- generally 20-30% off. I expect it to be discounted more the last two weeks, but we'll see. After Halloween, it'll all go on sale for 50-70% off.

Christmas stuff is on sale for 10% off. I don't know how much the sales reflect acknowledgment of recession and tighter consumer spending, or just normal mark-ups and advertising ploys.

I can't think of any place off hand that offers lay-a-way; most of the chain places offer their own store CC. But I haven't asked at any place either. At the soon-to-be-ex-apartment, most of the independent owned clothing stores (which are the type of stores I remember lay-away options at when I was a kid) are Indian -- selling saris, etc. and Bollywood videos. I wouldn't be surprised if they had alternative finance options to regular customers, who are mostly of Indian extraction.

Which segues into the observation that most of the independent stores -- of any type -- around here seem to be ethnically rooted. I suppose it is a niche that the big chains don't fill, and that a small store can't compete with a chain selling similar merchandise.

As a tangent, I did find it interesting that pretty much all of the stores out here in Seattle accept debit cards. It sure makes shopping at CostCo easier. Some, notably Arco gas stations and WinCo grocery stores, ONLY take debit or cash. (Like Costco, these are cheaper, min customer service, wholsaley type places.)

Based on my small sample size of obeserved customers at the craft store, I'd guesstimate that over half pay cash/debit at the craft store -- FWIW.